Star Trek IV: The Journey Home saw the Enterprise crew returning to the 20th century to save a pair of humpback whales. During their search, Spock jumped into their tank and communicated with Gracie – a humpback whale. What was science fiction may now have some scientific backing.

A research team (who called themselves Whale-SETI) successfully held a ‘conversation’ with a humpback whale named Twain for about 20 minutes.

Before you get too excited, all they did was play back a recorded humpback “contact” call. Twain approached and circled their boat, responding in a conversational manner to the whale’s greeting signal. Twain consistently matched the interval variations between each playback call.

I don’t know if I’d call it rocket science or really communicating by playing back a recording – but it is an interesting first start with some experimentations around timing/latency.

Articles:

• https://www.earth.com/news/scientists-have-20-minute-conversation-with-a-humpback-whale-named-twain/
• https://peerj.com/articles/16349/